Hero
by radycat
Summary: "The days are long, the nights longer, and Percy Jackson isn't a kid anymore."


The days are long, the nights longer, and Percy Jackson isn't a kid anymore.

He traded his sword for a gun and his heart for a badge a long time ago, and there isn't a second he isn't wishing he could trade his soul for a hundred others.

He has to be at least worth that, right? The Great Percy Jackson, the Savior of Olympus, the gods-damned Bane of Gaea. There's a trail of blood a mile long running behind him, and monsters don't really bleed red so what's that say about him?

(He'd take 75 if someone—anyone, offered.)

He's got a shit apartment in a big city now, and keeps every last Drachma hidden in a storage unit on the outskirts of town because he's an adult and adults leave their childhoods in the past where they fucking belong. He thinks sometimes, over a cold cup of coffee, that maybe that's what keeps most of the monsters away, nowadays. They're drawn to unit 3, past the barbed wire fences and 3–inch thick industrial steel, towards a hero's tomb. The joke's on them in the end, because the heroes are nothing but ghosts now, their bones with the earth and their names fading on cemetery stone.

Percy finds marks, though. In the mornings…the afternoons…the dead of night. He only goes to make sure they haven't gotten in. He always leaves as soon as he can, careful not to disturb the pieces of a golden dagger (shattered like a broken mirror) or the shredded remains of a tool-belt colored like rust.

(He'd take 50. March right up to the gates of the Underworld and beat and pound until his hands bled, until flesh, until muscle, until bone.)

The monsters Percy faces now are not ones he can slay. They wear the shells of mortals, sneering, sulking, without claws or fangs or golden eyes. Sitting in courtrooms and sliding money under the table; he's a politician, she's a business tycoon—it's tough Jackson but the law is the law and innocent until proven guilty, and he'll walk free while his wife and three kids lie half buried in a cheap grave off Prospect Park Lake. He use to fight for these people, he's got scars to prove it, but now even on his better days he wants to see them rot, pay for their crimes and face their maker. And they don't, not most of the time. He won't look himself in the mirror anymore, for that reason. Won't glance at the scar that curls over the right of his lip, doesn't think about how he searched for hours—days, for an ash, a chip or splinter, a smudge of charcoal and found nothing but an echoing laugh and the earth scorching, ready to swallow him alive.

(He'd settle for 25. Bind him to a rock and let the birds eat his organs every day for the rest of eternity, but let him see them as they found themselves whole again. Just once—just one fucking glance.)

He talked to Poseidon, first and last, after Gaea settled and all was as it "should be". He barely reached his father's chin, but held his gaze and said: "What do you want."

Poseidon didn't comment on his flat tone, but did clap his back like there was something to be congratulated for, "well done, my son."

Percy wanted to vomit.

"Zeus sent me to offer you the gift of immortality, once more," he said, smiling like they weren't standing on a mass grave, the ground soaked and the sky dry. "It's unheard of. A single hero being offered immortality twice, Percy, but we—"

"Will I start to act like you?"

Poseidon blinked, and then frowned, "what—"

Percy glared, sword still drawn. He's shaking, whether from anger or exhaustion he doesn't know. Doesn't care. "Will I start to act like you? Like Zeus. Like Hera—"

"Percy," he sighed, fatherly understanding at its finest, "I know you've lost—"

"Will. I. Start. To. Act. Like. You."

"The gift of immortality changes much, Percy." Poseidon reached to place his hand on Percy's shoulder. His hands were clean, unmarred by the battle. Fitting.

And Percy almost thought his father was driving him from a bad decision, but then he could see the chance for personal gain shining in his eyes, that chance for more power, and Percy shook his hand off with what little strength he had left. He took a step back. And another. And another.

"Percy," Poseidon called. "Where are you going? We aren't done."

"I have," his voice cracked, his legs wobbled. The earth couldn't be lurching because Gaea was asleep again. Because they had done it, they had saved the world! He wanted to shout it to the skies, shout it with his friends, celebrate until they all feel asleep in weird places and joked about it the next morning, with aching stomachs and nothing but thoughts of the future. Their future. "I—have… I'm done, Poseidon."

Don't worry, Percy. We'd feel them if they were dead.

"With this—with all of this."

We'd know if they'd passed on. We'd know if they were being judged.

(He'd settle for 1. Even if he had to go back and do it all over again. Every last part of his life set to replay. One for one, that's fair right? That's got to be some kind of fair, right? Please, by all the gods, someone tell him how fair it needed to be.)

He's on call in a typical winter, a cloud of mist at every exhale. The sky is white, the streets black, the sidewalk frosty gray. He rounds a corner, something sloshes under his boot and he looks down, passed his minty-clean badge and holstered gun, and finds the soggy mess of a trampled Yankees ball cap.

It's dark blue.

The moment stretches on while people walk around him, shooting him and the hat curious looks, but Percy can't take his eyes off it.

Until he does and he shoves his hands in his pockets, stepping over the discarded hat and making his way through the rest of his patrol.

Percy Jackson isn't a kid anymore, and he's got to remember that. Fair is unfair and right and wrong are one in the same, and there are no such things as happy endings.

Not for people like him.

* * *

end.


End file.
